Estate / Collection: Collection of a New York Surveyor

[MAP - NEW YORK CITY]

[ANONYMOUS SURVEYOR, POSSIBLY EDWIN SMITH]. [Untitled survey map of Tribca, from Varick to Washington Street, Christopher Street to West Houston Street]. New York: mid-nineteenth century, but before 1858. Manuscript map in ink, hand colored, laid down on linen with blue cloth border. Sheet measures 38 x 25 inches. Dust soiling, a few stains, some losses along edges, creasing, cracks and tears mostly near edges, some losses to blue cloth border, later manuscript annotations in pencil and ink to the recto, manuscript annotations and Edwin Smith's stamp to the verso, sold as is.

A fascinating survey of Tribca mapping the area from Varick to Washington Street, Christopher to West Houston Street, called Hammersly Street on the map (the name was changed in 1858). The map includes the lot numbers and the area's landmarks, some no longer extant. The large cemetery was St. John's Burying Ground which, after a long legal battle with Trinity Church Parish, was taken over by the city and remade into a public park in 1898. After the city took over the land, most of the old stones were buried in place and only a small number of the estimated ten thousand remains were relocated elsewhere. It is now James J. Walker Park and the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center. The map includes the location of a church, the still extant St. Luke in the Fields, and an unidentified Free School. Some later additions in brown ink seem to show the widening of Varick Street, completed in 1917.